Just Groqit!
If you’ve ever accidentally bought the same album, book or DVD twice because you forget you already had a copy at home, then to be honest, you have too many albums, books or DVDs. (Seriously, you don’t need to serve as a redundant backup for the Library of Congress.) But if you just can’t help yourself, and don’t want to carry long lists of what you already own, the Groqit will serve as your own personal librarian. It’s basically a pen-sized scanner that reads, stores and organizes barcodes from most consumer products. So the next time you’re at the store and aren’t sure if you already own a particular item, you can just scan the barcode and the Groqit will let you know if it’s already in your collection.
While it only has 128MB of storage on-board, that’s enough to keep track of more than a million barcodes, so there’s a good chance you’re not going to fill it up in your lifetime. One feature I particularly like is the company’s online service that will not only translate the barcode data into actual product info, but also allows you to share your lists with others. So the next time you’re trying to pick out a DVD for a friend’s birthday, you can avoid the embarrassment of choosing a title they already own. The Groqit pen is available on their site for $95, while the online service is $4.95 a month.
Additional information: A representative from the company contacted me and asked if they could talk about their Free offers. So here they are:
FREE STUFF:
If you give or get gifts, you can use the FREE services at Groqit’s site to share lists with friends.
Groqit’s site has tools that are free for anyone, whether they purchase a Groqit or not. They help you fill in information about books, movie, music and games (you put in a title, or a barcode number, the site’s data bases fill in the rest). You can put in a wishlist for books you want, one for games you want, and make lists of the movies you already have so they don’t worry about surprising you with a new one. You can make as many lists as you want, 100 items per list, free, and share them with as many friends as you want (also free).
So your lists are all in one place, and your friends can look them up whenever your birthday is coming up.
FOR COLLECTORS:
For people who are serious collectors — and there are a lot of us — just the word INSURANCE should conjure up some thoughts. The services are mostly free. They are very helpful for large collections, as the tools reduce the drudgery of data entry. We store the data securely on our servers, just in case you ever need it. This is true of the free (100 items per list) services as well as the paid ones.
We encourage people use to the free services; we know some will want the convenience and portability, and buy themselves a Groqit.